anyway.http://www.lumpley.com/
Comment thread - 2005-04-27: The Open House 4: Handshakingen-usThe Open House 4: Handshaking: Andy K at 2005-12-29 13:26:46http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#3326
-Andy
]]>Thu, 29 Dec 2005 13:26:46 -0500The Open House 4: Handshaking: GamerChick at 2005-12-25 01:42:51http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#3317
I'm Jae, 51, female, hard-core gamer of 20-plus years. No kids, but an adorable granddaughter. Yes, I know that makes no sense, but I love being able to say it. Single and seeking a gamer to spend my life with (and resigning myself to growing old alone).

I run a weekly horror game (Chill), and am very happy with the game and players, not so much the rules. I'm contemplating trying to develop my own cinematic horror game. My playes blog at Deadly Detroit and they are just amazing. I'm humbled and thrilled at the magic we're making together.

Until the past couple of years I was blissfully ignorant of the indy gaming scene, but attending the Game Design seminar at Gencon 2005 has shaken up my paradigms big time. I read the Forge from time to time, and Vincent's blog regularly. I had the pleasure of meeting Vincent at the seminar, and Vincent, you are feckin' brilliant. I'm still trying to grok DitV.

As I mentioned above, I've played with Paul Czege & his delightful wife Danielle, both "My Life With Master" and "Prime Time Adventures". I almost got them to guest in my Chill game, but Michigan weather thwarted us. I'm still hoping, because horror is my best thing.

I play in a weekly D&D 3.5 game - I cordially loathe the system, but love the GM, the players and the excellent story focus. I believe you can have great fun in any system, but some systems make you work harder for it.

I created (with the help of some wonderfully creative people) the RPGA's "Living Force" (Star Wars) campaign, and while I ran it the campaign was character and story focused, with an epic Star Wars feel. I'm not responsible for the atrocities committed after I was fired (three days before Christmas, 2003) and yes, I'm very bitter. Though not so bitter I couldn't help write the final trilogy for the campaign.

I help run a local role playing club (Capital Area Role Players), and am doing my best to keep bringing new people, especially women, into the hobby.

Okay, enough already. I keep a gaming blog and a life blog, and update neither often enough. Here I am, halfway through a bottle of pretty decent Shiraz, responding to blog posts on Christmas eve, which should pretty much define my life.
]]>Sun, 25 Dec 2005 01:42:51 -0500The Open House 4: Handshaking: GamerChick at 2005-12-25 00:35:07http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#3316
You can find me as JaeWalker on FindPlay, or jaegamer AT gmail DOT com
]]>Sun, 25 Dec 2005 00:35:07 -0500The Open House 4: Handshaking: Metal Fatigue at 2005-12-24 12:14:45http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#3314
I'm more interested in playing games than in designing them, but I occasionally get smacked with an idea. So far I've always managed to subdue the compulsion to develop them into actual games. (That's work, man! It's hard!)

I've been playing RPGs since I was about 7; I've been playing them right (i.e., in a manner consistently enjoyable by all involved) since I was about 26; I am now about 32. I have yet to play any of the cool indie games I've acquired, because I can't get a group together for anything except the game of Mage: the Ascension I've been GMing for six years and a bit. That game has nearly reached its conclusion, and I hope to repurpose my existing group (and its schedule slot) to play miniseries of a variety of games.

I also play in White Wolf LARPs. I'm not sure why. Masochism, maybe. It's never been a particularly enjoyable experience.

To date, I have generally preferred to take the GM role, but I think that mainly results from reluctance to trust someone else to drift the rules in the proper direction to make the game enjoyable for me. With more functional rules, I might be just as happy playing a different role.

I live in the general vicinity of Detroit, Michigan, USA. I work from home part-time as a software developer, and go to school part-time.
]]>Sat, 24 Dec 2005 12:14:45 -0500The Open House 4: Handshaking: ffilz at 2005-08-01 20:49:52http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#2078
Age 42, started in 1977 with the original Blue Book Basic D&D. Gaming experience mostly as a GM with quite a variety of systems (my players used to complain [actually they still do] about me changing systems all the time...).

Much of my early gaming career was with MIT's game club, where I mostly gamed with the "younger crowd" but did occaisionally hook up with the "elders" (especially Glen Blacow who is one of the people most influential in broadening my gaming skills).

These days I live in Beaverton Oregon (a suburb of Portland) and run Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved (a D20 game). I'm learning to be more honest with what I like in gaming (fairly old school, though I don't do "random encounters" much anymore - except when I need some filler).

Outside of gaming, I work for IBM in the Linux Technology Center, do model railroading (just getting started in garden railroading at my first house), read a fair bit of fantasy and science fiction, occaisionally build stuff with LEGO, and spend a lot of time with my church (Unitarian Universalist) where I work with the senior high youth group (and recently returned from a pilgrimage trip to Budapest and Transylvania).

Frank
]]>Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:49:52 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: urbanpagan at 2005-07-31 22:46:11http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#2075
here if you like.
]]>Sun, 31 Jul 2005 22:46:11 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: urbanpagan at 2005-07-31 22:42:51http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#2074
I've been reading the Forge for quite sometime as well but I rarely post there either. (Not sure why... I just haven't posted much.) *shrug*

As for my gaming history, I was introduced to D&D by my mother at the age of 4. (Really. 4.) I started playing seriously though at the age of 10. I started playing D&D and Battletech and then branched off into other games when I entered my teens. I can say my gaming resume runs a pretty wade gambit from a bunch of CCG's, board and table top games to games like Shadowrun, Car Wars, and Harn to games like Call of Chthulhu, Mage and Heavy Gear and now of course, Dogs in the Vineyard.

On to the personal bits: I'm 30, married (obviously) to a gamer (woot!), an office assistant, and an avid knitter. :)
]]>Sun, 31 Jul 2005 22:42:51 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Sven at 2005-07-26 18:15:11http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#2024
I'm Sven, from Sweden. I have engaged in a lot of types of role playing, without being an expert in anything. At the moment I seem to mostly steer my interest towards all kinds of non-fantasy larp and the special Danish/Swedish brand of freeform table top ('friform'!). But I enjoy as well good tradional table top. The demo of the new Warewolf game is an example of that in my book. I would really like try to play more of the typical Forge games, especially since they are quite far away from what I usually see as my aestethics.

About all this (and not much more) I write about at polyfem transformed. In a few days I will write about a hardcore Dutch bordello larp, (I wasn't there I must add...if my girlfriend would read this) so watch out for that.

Outside of that I will (hopefully) very soon grab my masters degree in engineering biology and get away from this city. It seems like I for know don't do much more than roleplay, write about roleplaying, finishing my degree and studying Turkish. I'm a slow man sometimes.

I read this blog. I don't follow all the comment threads, but read all the main articles anyway. Quite ofte I don't agree, but the clarity is often astounding.

/Sven Holmstr??m
]]>Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:15:11 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Matt Machell at 2005-07-12 22:08:59http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#1903
I'm Matt and I'm 28. I've been posting at the Forge for a fair few years, though I read more than I contribute. I lurk round here too. You may remember me from such RPG books as the Nopress Anthology.

I help other indie designers with web stuff. I write games, few of which I consider finished. I have a site called Realms which contains my RPG related articles, reviews and links.
]]>Tue, 12 Jul 2005 22:08:59 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Adam Dray at 2005-07-11 11:00:00http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#1651
I'm 36 in a couple weeks, married, two cats, no kids. I've been gaming since 1980, when my dad's friend gave me and my brother the red boxed D&D set with Keep in the Borderlands in it. I started designing games a few years after that, though they weren't any good. I've never stopped tinkering with game design.

I've been a Forge member since 2001 but I haven't been very active till recently. I decided it was time to finish "starting games" and start "finishing games." I am proud to announce Verge, a Narrativist cyberpunk game, as my freshman entry into design. It's well on its way towards finished and I hope to have it in saleable form by the end of the year.

My day job is as an enterprise (software) architect for a leading fleet management company. My expertise is in web programming (mostly ColdFusion) and application integration but I'm a generalist.

In my scarce free time, my wife Stephanie and I run an online RPG (mud) called FiranMUX, which is a heavily coded monstrosity that simulates the interesting parts of daily life in a fantasy early-Iron-age world. It's claim to fame is that it's a truly generational game: players are playing the third and fourth generation of characters born on the game and aged to perfection over compressed game time (3:1 or 4:1).

I love Vincent's site but find it difficult to navigate and find new posts where I left off reading. If it were tied into an RSS feed, I'd be happy because I'd read it from my LiveJournal friends list. Am I missing a link somewhere?
]]>Mon, 11 Jul 2005 11:00:00 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Peter Dyring-Olsen at 2005-07-11 11:00:00http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#1635
32 years old, children's books editor from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Girlfriend called Ditte, 8-months-old daughter called Freja, not sleeping a lot these days :-)
Been roleplaying for well over 15 years - sort of lost interest because it didn't quite DO it for me anymore, then experienced a rekindling of the fire when I ran into DitV and Sorcerer. Am now planning on playing a lot more - and introducing Ditte and good friends to the "hobby".
Will probably not be posting a lot, but lurking quite a bit.
Thanks for having me.
]]>Mon, 11 Jul 2005 11:00:00 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Paul Kimmel at 2005-07-11 11:00:00http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#1608
]]>Mon, 11 Jul 2005 11:00:00 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Shreyas Sampat at 2005-07-11 11:00:00http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#867
I lurk here a lot.

I have a game blog and another blog, which is less interesting to link to.
]]>Mon, 11 Jul 2005 11:00:00 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Jason Petrasko at 2005-07-11 11:00:00http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#866
I've recently turned 30, work in retail during the day, and game design/play by night. My game dev blog is here, which is shared between a few other brave game building souls I've befriended online. My budding company is here. I frequent the Forge, but not RPG.net so much anymore.

My email is: jp (at) greyearth (dot) com
]]>Mon, 11 Jul 2005 11:00:00 -0400The Open House 4: Handshaking: Troy_Costisick at 2005-07-11 11:00:00http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=38#865
My name is Troy, formerly with Twilight Press (www.embertwilight.com). Now I'm moving from website to website gleaning knowledge for my next project. Really enjoy your site, Vincent. I look forward to learning from what goes on here and applying it to my new design.